For the 2017 BCV Solidarity initiative, the Bank’s employees chose to fund the construction of a 150-tonne cold storage facility near Niamey, Niger. The facility was inaugurated at a ceremony held in March and will be used to store potato harvests. For 2018, BCV has chosen to support an initiative to fully equip a hospital located in the Anjingan Klungkung region of Indonesia.

This past spring, Agro-sans-frontière, a non-profit organization based in Buchillon, in Vaud Canton, built a cold storage facility to enable potato farmers in Niger to store their harvests for longer and thereby boost their income. Agro-sans-frontière regularly sends both working and retired agricultural engineers to developing countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and Madagascar to provide their expertise to local farmers. The cold storage facility was inaugurated on 1 March at a ceremony attended by Nigerien officials and a delegation of employees from the BCV Solidarity working group.  

This past June, the working group of volunteer employees met to decide which initiative BCV will support in 2018. They reviewed proposals from some 50 organizations and selected one run by the Fair Future Foundation – a Swiss foundation headed by Alex Wettstein that provides healthcare to poor people in Indonesia. The CHF 150,000 donation from BCV Solidarity will be used to equip a public hospital that the foundation recently built in Anjingan Klungkung, an impoverished region in eastern Bali where access to healthcare is very limited.